| EZMARC'S 2002 Fishing reports |
|
| Dec. 7th: Huron Afternoon and nite fishing: Went out with Buck and Chris on his boat. It was trip getting in and out of the river as there was lots of ice and just a small ice laden channel to get the boat through plus some floaters on the lake close to the river. We started fishing west of Craanberry and trolled east with the wind towards Vermilion. the water was dirty but cleared up nicely by the time we got over by Sherod Park but then it was time to quit as the wind and waves were building. No fish but I got some decent ice pictures they are here. 83 trips Nov. 27th: Kelley's Island night fishing: Gregg Gallagher took me out on his boat. We fished thebay area on the north side of the island. We got 3 fish in the boat (all small 2-3 pounders) and lost 1. Husky jerks and ripsticks took the fish and the first 2 were on the edge of shallow water while marking 25' and the next 2 were in shallow water 8-9 feet on the NE corner of the island. Water temp was 41 with a cold SW wind blowing. 82 trips Nov. 23rd: Vermilion night fishing: Went out with Captain Shaggy to the same spot I ended up at on Weds. night. We had one fish on and landed in the first five minutes when the sky lit up with lightning so we called it quits and headed in. While running in I hit something that did major damage to the lower unit and I found later that it may have ruined the crankshaft as well. The water was clear, the fish were looking to be on but Ole Mother Nature reared her ugly head again and ruined everything. I may be done boating for the year, hope not! If this is it then I hope anyone that reads these reports will be back next year for more of the same. I'll post the new link at the top of this page and also in my profile on WC, GoFish and at Fishingworks.com. 81 trips Nov. 20th: Vermilion night Fishing: Went out by myself after calling several people for a spur of the moment trip. Wasted some time in the shaloow water by Cranberry and then in the deeper water off of the Castle. I moved into the area that me and Crhis caught fish in the week before an popped an 11 pounder right away with a Reefrunner trolled slow (.8-1.0 MPH) at 9 feet back. I had several more hookups and lost 2 at the boat trying to net them myself a but did manage to get 2 more 5 pounders in. It was a good night and all the fish came on deep diving dranks except 1 on a Husky Jerk. 80 Trips Picture Nov. 17th: Vermilion Night fishing! Me and Chris tried out the night bite off Huron and over to Cranberry with no luck and no hookups.79 Trips Nov. 10th: Vermilion night fishing! Me and Chris went out of Vermilion for some night fishing. When we put the boat in the battery was dead. Found out later that somehow the light in the battery compartment got left on. I swapped out the battery with one of the trolling batteries and went fishing a little later than we wanted to. Fishing was slow in the 19-22 foot range where we started but picked up a little in the shallow water east of the Castle. I got a 7 pound Smallie and a 7 pound steelie on my side, Chris got 3 small walleyes on her side. Ripsticks for the eyes 40 back and lil rippers (shallow) 30 back for the steelies. The smallmouth came on a Thunderstick Junior on lead core. 78 trips Picture Oct. 31-Nov. 3rd: Walleye Central Get Together! I fished with Toolman on Thursday the 31st, We started in Vermilion and tried several areas with no luck. Our best marks came over by the Lorain lighthouse in shallow water but we had no activity all day long. I didn't fish on the 1st because of vehicle problems. If you ever need mechanical work done while in Huron, stop in and see Rob at the garage just west of the Huron ramp. He did a great job of getting me in and I feel that he was very fair in his prices. He even cleaned my Yukon. Saturday, the Bragging Rights Tourney was cancelled but Me and Chris, Buck and Lazyeye went out anyway. It wasn't too bad but we took our trailers to Vermilion so we wouldn't have to run back in big waves to Juron. We caught 1 fish and Buck got 1 fish and that was all I heard all day long. We had more action but never saw anything close too the boat. Sunday the 2nd me and Chris went out of Huron again and again we got 1 fish in the boat. We got it in close by Cranberry in almost the same spot as the day before. Steelies were being caught outside the Vermilion river in 20' of water. 77 Trips Pictures Oct. 26th & 27th: Vermilion: Both days were tough! Me and Chris went out Saturday afternoon perching. It did not go well. Turns out the Steelies moved in and probably turned of the perch from in front of the river. Who knows? Sounds good though! We also tried for eyes for an hour or so before dark with no luck and no pullbacks. Ditto for Sunday except we did find some perch that were big and willing to bite but only after several moves in fairly rough water. Sunday I had my ex Brother in law with us. He got a little green but handled it well and never chummed. Here's a picture of a couple perch. 74 trips Oct. 20th: Vermilion: Day from Hell! This may be long! The day started with a lot of anticipation after 2 days of wind and rain. Before we even left home we had a glitch. I had put the boat away a little differently to attempt to get the Yukon in the garage. Well it didn't work and the boat was at such an angle we couldn't pull it out with the truck. Had to do it by hand (tandem trailers don't turn well by hand). We got to the lake at about 11AM and ran out to where I had gotten into them on Monday. Guess what! They weren't there any more. I thought we'd try it anyway since there have been several times we've caught fish that didn't show on the screen. Then my X15 GPS died on me, no problem because I still had the 350A. We started trolling and the kicker died.I assumed my auxiliary oil tank was dry and added oil to the tank. Still nothing, pumped the primer and it wouldn't pump up. Then I started checking fittings and lines all the way back to the tank.and could find nothing wrong. Hooked the primer bulb up to the line to the main engine and it worked perfectly. At this point I'm getting frustrated and Chris is staying out of the way at the front of the boat. I then turned into a plumber and rerouted lines so that I could run the kicker and started fishing. We fished for about an hour with no luck. Some friends had reported good luck about 5 miles west and 3 miles east. We opted for the east fish and I then replumbed the gas line to the main engine and took off. We got most of the way there and the main motor started dying on me at full throttle (WHAT THE ****). That's when it dawned on me that we were out of gas! DUH!!!! We finally got to fish a short time later when Tim Joseph brought me his gas can and we proceeded to troll into the river from that point. We got 3 fish in the last hour or so of daylight. 1 on a Reefrunner 15' back and 2 on leadcore with a DJ thunderstick. Oh yeah! The GPS X15 failure was due to a bad battery, evidently my onboard charger isn't charging that particular battery back up. Looks like I have some work to do putting things back together again. This trip was an eye opener for me in that even though you think you've got your shit together that stupid things can and do still happen. We had even discussed getting gas on the way up there this morning but mistakenly thought we had fueled up on the last trip and were in a hurry! No pictures again! 72 trips! Oct 14th: Vermilion: Awesome fishing today! The fish were jumping in the boat. Lead core and DJ Thundersticks were the hot presentation but a Renosky with a whole worm at 120 back got me a 13.5 fish and 2 other hookups that may have been as big or bigger. Other boats were doing it with Dipsy's and big spoons but it just didn't work for me again today. Wish I could figure that one out? I fished the 34-22 down to 32-25 lines and then ran out of them. Moved to the 33-23 line with the pack and picked up 2 more pretty quick. I was pretty busy and lost count but I had at least 18 fish on and lost several of them trying to net them by myself. Life is good again. 71 Trips Oct. 12th: Vermilion: Fishing started slowly but with a nice 6-7 pounder that Chris picked up on a Reerunner. We went a couple hours with no action until I set out a 3 color lead core line with a DJ Thunderstick. I was getting good action on that and managed to pick a few with it and then the feeding bell went off for the eyes about an hour or so before dark. The fish moved up and we were getting them with Big Jon mini disks and Scorpion spoons and also Reefrunners 50' back. Slow day but a really fast hour. 8 eyes. 4 in the 7 pound range and 4 in the 3-5 pound range. pictures 70 trips. Oct. 9th: Happy Birthday to me! 56 of them and life is good! Fished with Foots out of Huron for a couple of hours. It started great with a 4-5 pounder while we were setting lines out. Great marks at the 28-30 lines but we never had another hit. Tried for an hour after dark also with no luck. The fish came on a Blue Silver Reefrunner 35 back. No pictures, I keep forgetting the camera. 69 trips. Oct. 5th & 6th: I'm not doing well for the eyes lately. Me and Chris fished late Sat afternoon off of Vermilion at the 28/28 and never had a hit. We fished both before and after dark and made a move to 15 foot of water where we marked nothing whatsoever. Fish started showing up on the screen at about 22' but we had no action. Sunday we got on the lake about noon for perch fishing and although we got our limit it wasn't easy. It took us 5 hours of sorting out the little ones to get 60 decent perch. We didn't try for any eyes because it was getting late and we were a little frustrated with our last couple trips. There have been some good reports on the eyes but you need to be in the right place at the right time to make a good day of it. The bite should get better as the temps cool though. Water temp last year at this time was 63 degrees, water temp this year was 67.5 degrees. Seems like we're a little warm yet. No pictures were taken. 68 trips Oct 2 and 3rd: RCL Championship in Red Wing, Minnesota: The first day I fished with Don Smith from the Ludington area in Michigan. Don was a great guy and we got along well but even after a week at Red Wing he hadn't figured out a bite. That didn't change on day 1 either. We got a donut for the day. We did catch fish they were either the wrong kind or the wrong size though. We saw a very large Flathead caught and I experienced the Mississippi Lock system (pictures) for the 1st time. The 2nd day I fished with Leon Houle. Leon is a guy I've been reading about for years and years in Walleye In-Sider and I had a great time just watching his boat control in the most crowded conditions I've ever seen, you could literally hand the guy in the next boats a minnow with out stretching at times. We only caught 3 keeper fish but I learned a lot by keeping my mouth shut and watching. It was disappointing finishing up at about 185th but it was an interesting experience, I'd like to do more of them but putting myself in the hands of the unknown may be at an end as a co angler. I'd recommend the experience to anyone that is interested in making the jump to the pro side of these tourneys. 66 trips Sept. 23rd: Went fishing out of Huron with Eric for a few hours late in the afternoon. NW winds and stained water. We caught 3 fish and none had any real size to them. 2 fish came on Reefrunners up high and 1 on a Stinger spoon. Dan and Buck had their boats out also. Dan got 6 fish with a perch Stinger being the hot lure. Buck got 2 fish and a couple throwbacks but I don't know what their best presentation was. I did get 1 picture, here it is. Huron Pics 64 trips Sept. 8th-14th: DEVIL'S LAKE, NORTH DAKOTA Wow, this is a good place to fish! Chris and I went up for the WWA National Championship tourney. We prefished for 4 days and then had a 3 day tourney. We finished up in 38th place out of 58 teams but considering the miserable weight we had on day 2 it wasn't all bad. We caught well over 2 hundred walleye, a few pike and perch and 1 tiny white bass. The walleye bite is comparable to a bluegill bite around home. We caught fish everywhere we stopped, they just wern't the right size to do us any good in the tourney. We had a great time and learned some new boat control tactics which is something I need to improve on since boat control isn't a real issue on Lake Erie.. I didn't take many pictures but do have a few. 63 trips Devils Lake pictures Sept. 4th: No fishing since the last report, but I've been hearing good things about the near shore bite around Sawmill and west to Cedar Point. Hope it's true and the start of a good Vermilion area fall bite. Last weekend I helped my son Charles move to Connecticut just off the Yale campus and next week will be filled with Devil's Lake N. Dakota fishing in preparation for the National WWA tourney. I'll update when I get back and hopefully will have some good pics and good news to report. Aug 22, 23, 24, 25: Fished the Fairport area for 4 days. Thursday and Friday were rough and wet so we fished close. We didn't get any on Thursday and only one on friday but we got that at the end of the day in an area that we had caught fish the week before.. Matt and Dan had gotten 3 in close Friday so we decided to not make the 26 mile run to north of Geneva that we heard was producing, that turned out to be a bad decision as we caught nothing but perch and White Bass all day and we were definately in the hole with our championship run to N. Dakota in jeopardy. Saturday we decided to bite the bullet and make the long run for a known large pocket of fish that was north of Geneva. this was a good decision even though it didn't help us in this tourney it put big points on our slate and assured us of a shot at the Nationals in early Sept. Our biggest fish was 7+ pounds and everything came off dipsy's and spoons. The tourney was won by guys running 300 feet of wire and crankbaits off small boards. 56 trips Pictures August 17th: Chris and I went to Fairport to prefish for the WWA championship next week. We didn't do great but managed 2 fish in an area everybody says is pretty slow. Matt and Dan were there also and got skunked but all in all it wasn't a bad day for a start. 52 trips August 10th: Chris and I went to Ashtabula for the WRWA tourney. It was a beautiful day but a little choppy for trolling into the waves. We got no fish(eyes) in the boat but did lose a couple nice sized ones. I had lots of hits on the Slide diver again but few good hookups. Chris got her first steelhead of the year into the boat. We were catching very nice sized perch trolling harnesses and cranks. They were coughing up large gobs of water fleas again. 51 trips Aug. 3rd: Me and chris took her 10 year old son out for the first time at Vermilion. We had fairly rough water but he loved it and did a good job of reeling in fish (mostly sheephead and white bass) We did manage to get 4 keeper walleyes but it was a slow day overall. Picture 50 trips August 1st 2002: I changed the format a little. All previous 2002 reports are on the link just above. All new reports will be from latest on top to earliest so you don't have to scroll the whole page. I expect this page to get really busy when those big girls move back to my homegrounds of Huron in another month or so. The quest for that 16 pounder will continue at a lot more hectic pace once they're closer to home. I'm also going to try to post links to pics in each up date. Hopefully there will be some good photogenic fish caught. |
| This site is strictly for my own personal reports on the success and failure to find willing to bite Walleyes. There are plenty of information and link sites around so I won't even attempt to compete with them. My goal every time out is to catch big fish and that means a lot of traveling. I also enjoy the competition of tournaments and my partner Chris and I enter as many team events as possible. Those results will all be posted below. I don't advertise or accept sponsors. If there are any good or bad things to say about any fishing related products they will be my true feelings. If there are any questions please feel free to e mail me at the link atjust above or leave a message on GFO or Walleye Central. |
   |
| Latest Reports start at top of yellow section |
| Den's Message Board |
 |
|
 |
 |
|
